1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a print control technology that is used when a viewer prints out a picture or the like from a digital broadcast. Specifically, the present invention relates to a technology that is used principally by a provider broadcasting content for the above-mentioned print control.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, due to the launching of full-scale digital broadcasts which included an abundant variety of content and information, printers from which pictures or the like can be printed out from the digital broadcast have been suggested. Moreover, a model that is capable of printing a high-definition picture just the way it is displayed on a high-quality television has come along. Practically, copyright management cannot be achieved in this situation for a provider of broadcast content that tries to exercise copyright to recover a part of the cost that was required to create the broadcasted content.
One of the measures to prevent such copyright infringement from happening is disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent No. 2001-086452 titled “System for printing out still picture, method for printing out still picture, and information providing medium.” Using the invention of the above-mentioned reference, the provider of the broadcast content principally limits and controls picture printing performed by the viewer, by setting “a print permission flag” in header information of a TS packet defined according to the MPEG system.
However, in the case of the above-mentioned conventional method, a subject to be controlled by the print permission flag is only picture data and, in addition, it is controlled on a displayed whole-screen basis. For this reason, it is impossible to cover transmitted data contents other than pictures that are attached to digital broadcast, and to limit print performance to only one frame out of multi-channel display or to only pictures out of a mixed display of pictures and text. Especially when one screen includes both a part that needs to be limited for printing and a part that does not need to be limited for printing, print limitation should be placed on the whole screen. Such a feature would cause complaints to both the provider's side of the content and the viewer's side.
To solve the stated problem, it is an object of the present invention to provide a print controlling apparatus that allows print limitations to be placed on a part of a plurality of contents displayed on one screen.
Moreover, it is a second object to provide a print controlling apparatus that allows print limitation to be placed on data contents interlocking with main track video.